


in light of you (i am undone)

by writingpenguin



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Romance, depictions of grief and anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 15:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15732393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingpenguin/pseuds/writingpenguin
Summary: “Yuuri,” Victor says softly. “Who do you want me to be to you?”Yuuri pauses, considers the question carefully as he looks around him—at the grayness of the sky, the stillness of the sea, and the subtle beauty found in all the dullness of this Japanese backwater town this man had blindly leapt into. Perhaps there is something about the ordinariness of it and the ordinariness of him.Perhaps,Yuuri thinks,there is something about the ordinariness of you too.(or: In a reality where the most honest representation of a human being is the light that their soul gives, Yuuri dances; Victor loves.)(Written for the first issue of the online YOI literary magazine, Shall We Read.)





	in light of you (i am undone)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for the first issue of Shall We Read, a YOI literary magazine. It was an absolute pleasure to work on it! :)

* * *

_ Act I _

* * *

 

_ Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus.  _

Yuuri’s soul light manifests easily, hovering above the palm of his outstretched hand.  _ Focus.  _

He lets it glide down the length of his arm, following an unseen path onto his shoulder then tracing the line of his clavicle before it dips, circling around his torso.  _ Focus. Repeat.  _ This is an exercise of control, after all. The music playing through his earbuds distracts him from the roaring applause outside, grounding his nerves as he goes through the motions of his routine. He sucks in a deep breath and checks the clock hanging on the far side of the training room. Twenty minutes.  _ Exhale.  _ He can do this. He can. Again.

_ Breathe in.  _ Down his arm.  _ Breathe out.  _ His chest.  _ Breathe in—  _

“Yuuri!” 

He looks up, stilling his movements. Celestino stands before him, expression marked with worry as he hands Yuuri his phone. “Your sister is calling.”

Celestino usually knows better than to interrupt his pre-performance routine. Yuuri dreads the worst. He takes the phone, holds it up to his ear, and listens. 

His light fizzles out. 

_ Breathe. _

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri has always grown up surrounded by a variety of lights: the gentle earthy green of his father, the splendidly tender amber of his mother, and the fiercely burning orange of his sister. Bright, warm, and constant—the earliest memory that he has is of his mother singing him a lullaby, with one hand holding him by her lap and the other cupping honeyed radiance by his heart, soft and comforting as he falls asleep.  

Yuuri has always reached for the lights, eyes wide at the magic of it. 

The local shrine priestess in Hasetsu once told him,  _ This is the truth of your soul. This is you in your purest form. _

But:

On the stage in Sochi, Yuuri’s light flickers around him, weak and erratic. He falls from an overly rotated  _ tour en l’air; _ it dies. The crowds clamor, and everything is suddenly the loud crackle of static endlessly reverberating in his ears. He sees only the empty space of his hand.  

_ This is the truth of you, your purest form.  _

(read: nothing)

_ Who are you? _

 

* * *

 

In the aftermath of his disaster of a performance, Yuuri finds himself trembling in the jacket and track pants that he has changed into, and he ignores all the concerned looks sent his way as he stumbles his way around into the empty bathroom to lock himself in a cubicle, collapsing on the closed toilet seat.

_ Breathe in. Breathe out.  _

(it’sokayit’sokayit’sokayit’sokay—vicchan, _ ohgod— _ it’sokayit’sokay. pull yourself together and build back the pieces of you. it’sokayit’sokay. it’s not. vicchan.vicchan.vicchan. his phone. where is his phone? oh. dropped on the floor like his shattered hopes and dreams—)

_ “Hey!”  _ And Yuuri yelps, taken aback by the force of the kick aimed at his cubicle door.  _ “Hey.  _ Get the  _ fuck  _ out of there, pig!”

Yuuri’s chest constricts, freezing in panic.  _ What, who— _

_ "Get out of there before I climb over this door to drag your living corpse out and—” _

Quickly, Yuuri unlocks the door, using his free hand to rub the salt and tears off his cheeks before facing his hostile harasser, an overly aggressive teenager dressed in a leopard-print hoodie and a deep blue Russian team jacket.

“...Yuri Plisetsky?” Yuuri acknowledges, voice low in tired confusion. 

“Finally,” Yuri, the newly crowned World Junior light dance champion, hisses, vicious in unexplained self-righteous anger. He points accusingly, a flash of passionate red flying off the tip of his finger.  _ "Loser.  _ What were you going to do in there? Cry out the entire evening?”

Releasing a shuddering breath at the sudden display of power, Yuuri shuts his eyes; he brings a hand to knead at the tightness of his chest.  _ Yes,  _ he wants to snap back, _ and that is none of your goddamn business.  _

But that would just bring more trouble than it’s worth. It’s more than what he can deal with right now. 

Apparently, he’s taking too long to reply because Yuri impatiently calls out again,  _ “Hey—”  _

“Yuri Plisetsky,” Yuuri instead repeats and though he tries to keep some appearance of dignity, his voice cracks anyway. “What do you want from me?”

Yuri scoffs. “What do _I_ want? I want you to retire. You don’t deserve to be here! Not with that kind of light control—that _pathetic_ excuse of a performance!” He tilts his chin up in a show of superiority. He burns crimson. “One Yuri is enough, and I’m obviously the better one,” he says, looking as if he’s daring Yuuri to challenge him. 

_ Breathe.  _ Any other time, Yuuri would have been aghast. As it is, Yuuri can  _ not  _ deal with this. He can only nod in his exhaustion. “Okay.”  _ Breathe.  _

_ “Okay?!”  _ Yuri repeats with a series of native curses, sounding outraged beyond belief. Yuuri does not want to know why.  _ “What do you mean okay?” _

Yuuri does not answer. He shoves past the incredulous Russian.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

He leaves. 

 

* * *

 

The splash of pure silver burns sharply in his mind; he brushes it away. 

“A commemorative photo?”

_ (No.) _

 

* * *

_ Act II _

* * *

 

Yuuri gives up at the end of winter, when the snow begins to thaw out. It’s almost poetic, he thinks—to finish when the world starts anew: 

“I’m going home.”

From the way Phichit suddenly grasps at the door frame as if in frantic need of support, Yuuri knows that this is not what his roommate has expected of him. 

“What?” Phichit croaks, eyes haphazardly taking in the sight of Yuuri’s half-packed suitcases on the floor and the clear absence of Victor Nikiforov posters on their dorm room walls. “You can’t just—it’s too sudden! Yuuri…”

Yuuri smiles, trying to pass nonchalance with an apologetic shrug. He looks down, not knowing where to direct his gaze, and fidgets. _ He’s not fooling anyone, but it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it? _ “There’s no point in me staying here. I’ve already graduated, so my visa is expired. And it’s not like I can renew my contract with Celestino anyway.”

Phichit shakes his head in denial. “You can apply for another visa, and you know Ciao-Ciao wouldn’t—”

“I miss home, Phichit,” Yuuri interrupts softly.  _ I’m sorry,  _ he thinks as he watches his best friend come to terms with his leaving, the latter’s expression conflicted with worry and heartbreak.  

“Oh.” Phichit nods slowly. “Oh. Of course. I support you, Yuuri,” Phichit assures, even as he visibly struggles to smile back, and steps closer to him. “Always.” 

“Thank you.” 

“But,” Phichit says waveringly, slowly taking Yuuri’s hands in his. “Let’s try this one more time.”

An affectionate vermillion, so different from the stark anger of  _ red  _ in the hands of Yuri Plisetsky, gathers in Phichit’s palms, ready to guide Yuuri’s own light out into the open. 

“Phichit,” Yuuri starts, pained at the very thought of the attempt; he feels Phichit grip his hands tighter. “I can’t. I told you. I haven’t been able to conjure light since Sochi.” 

“One more time,” Phichit says determinedly, looking imploringly at him. “For old times’ sake, and if this doesn’t work, then let me at least give you my blessing.”

 

* * *

 

Yuuri stares at his hands, feeling and remembering: the hesitant but hopeful nature of his soul, flickering with the soft yellow of candlelight; this very reflection of his being; the radiance he carries with him in the arching of his fingers and toes every jete and pirouette across the room. 

And yet,  _ nothing.  _

He clenches his fists and exhales what he thinks is barely not a sob. When Yuuri closes his eyes shut, a hand is laid on his own earnestly. The brilliance of warm red sinks into him.  

“You’ll make it through this,” Phichit whispers, his grip on Yuuri strong and steady—already lending support as he bestows upon this man whom he considers his brother this manifestation of his soul.

“May my light help you find peace.”

 

* * *

 

Yuuri leaves the world behind him quietly, a silent non-answer to the questions of his terrible performance in Sochi, and if he’s willing to be honest with himself, the rest of his mostly unremarkable career. 

It’s a retreat of sorts—or perhaps even a retirement; a time that he isn’t fully sure that he can recover in, if he discovers what exactly it is that he is recovering from. (read: in the heart of things, it’s grief.) What crushes Yuuri the most is the fact that he has almost nothing to show with the culmination of his years abroad—barely any victories to speak of and the only success of unlearning the craft that he had been honing his skills on for the past decade. (He has no justification for leaving home and abandoning— _ stop.) _ For the most part, most of this has been locked up inside of him; he hasn’t  _ dared— _ who is he to mourn when he has done nothing to deserve it? Who is he to return home? Who was he to leave?

Yuuri finds a welcome party of one as he steps onto the railway platform of his hometown station. 

“Minako-sensei,” he starts, a nervous smile on his lips at the sight of his childhood dance mentor. 

Elegant and poised, Minako doesn’t look like she has aged a year. Her keen sense of self seems to have hardly changed as well, if the way her gaze roves over Yuuri’s not particularly athletic figure indicates. Yuuri watches her look at him now with hard eyes and a lecture that’s surely on the tip of her tongue. 

The wideness of his smile is stretched further, taut and tested. 

“Yuuri.” 

He holds his breath—

—and promptly has it knocked out of him as she bowls him over with two arms wrapping tightly around his waist. 

“Minako-sensei?” 

The world is ringing again.

_ "Okaeri." _

 

* * *

_ Act III _

* * *

 

In Hasetsu, Yuuri finds that both nothing and everything has changed: the salty tang of the sea in the air and the familiarity that he navigates the town with despite his five-year absence are memories that he takes up with ease, but he is unused to the acknowledging smiles and the posters of him all around, these depictions of him mid-dance and mid-expression, so utterly exposed to the world. 

There are times when he flinches at the sight of them.  

_ I am not who you think I am,  _ he thinks to himself and maybe wants to scream but doesn’t.

Perhaps that’s part of the issue.  _ You don’t know me.  _ _ (‘And why would they, when you’ve never given them the chance to?’ _ his mind whispers back to him when he lays on his back and stares at the ceiling for the rest of the night.) 

The truth, Yuuri knows, is this:

A boy grew up with his head in the clouds, his heart in his sleeve, and with two feet that leapt into the sky for sight of a dream taken from the grainy footage of a Junior World champion on the dance studio’s old television screen. And for want of a soul, he returned home. 

(No. That’s not quite right.)

A boy stumbled into adulthood with his head held carefully high and a heart buried beneath a blanket of uncertainty; his two feet were battered and bruised long before Victor Nikiforov, but the dream, he acknowledges, came then. 

His soul light was born in this time—after the dream but before the journey of it; it manifested late by a few years, only revealing itself when Yuuri received the joy of a puppy in his arms because Yuuri, in all that he was, was someone who just wanted to _ love. _

_ (This is the truth of you, in your purest form.) _

_ Is this penance then? _ Yuuri asks to the smoke gently curling in the air as he lights a pair of incense sticks, sticking them into the pot of sand of this tiny shrine of a dog well-loved even from over 6,000 miles away.  _ Was I too selfish for leaving you? For leaving my family, this onsen, this town?  _

 

* * *

 

“So is this it?” 

Yuuri pauses, hands stilling from their work of scrubbing the bathing room tiles. He doesn’t raise his head, but he does tilt it in Mari’s direction as acknowledgement. 

Mari frowns, snatching the cleaning brush away from his grasp as he sighs. “This is hell on your knees,” she says by means of explanation. 

Yuuri watches her, waiting for more, but when she says nothing else, he decides to reach for the spare brush floating on the half-filled bucket of soapy water by his side. Mari kicks it away; Yuuri observes the way it slides out a few inches, sudsy liquids sloshing violently over the brim. 

Five years ago, Yuuri might have felt gratefulness. Now, he only feels a surge of irritation as he makes another pass for the brush. 

Mari blocks him again. 

_ “Onee-san,”  _ Yuuri huffs, sitting back on his calves, knees tucked under him. 

_ “No.” _

_ “Mari—”  _

“You’ve been sulking the whole week. _ Okaasan and otousan  _ are worried,” Mari says, gaze cutting deeply into him, and if Yuuri has had any doubts as to whether or not the past five years have affected Mari’s ability to read him so well, then they are surely gone now. Yuuri watches as she ducks her gaze down, adjusts the way her knees settle on the slippery floor and starts to scrub the tiles with a brutal kind of efficiency that can only be earned with years of working in a  _ ryokan  _ like theirs. “Minako’s waiting in the studio.”

Yuuri wants to ask if she’s angry at him, if she regrets staying and letting him chase a dream that was too far to reach. Instead, he says, “...I’m sorry.”

Mari inhales sharply. “You should know that if there’s anyone who has to apologize, then it’s me. I should have watched Vicchan more closely—”

“It was an accident,” Yuuri interrupts softly. “I don’t blame you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Mari narrows her eyes. “Why are  _ you  _ saying sorry? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I left,” Yuuri says, words slipping out of him before he could think about them; and he sees the hard lines by his sister’s brow soften. 

“You did,” she says. There’s something that isn’t really a smile playing on her lips, but the sentiment remains the same. Mari does not explain, but she does repeat this:

“Minako is waiting for you in the studio.”

 

* * *

 

**YUURI KATSUKI PERFORMS TO VICTOR NIKIFOROV’S STAMMI VICINO**

**_308,509 views_**                               **_10.2k likes | 256 dislikes_**

475 Comments

 

**katsukidon**

HIS SOUL LIGHT IS RED WHY IS IT RED??? GAKHSKJKS

**fs-otaku**

                it looks like a blessing to me. it’s probably phichit’s, given that they train together. someone confirm?  


**katsukidon**

                GUYS I CANT WHAT IS THIS http://www.japanstimes.co.jp/2016/03/02/yuuri-katsuki-retires/

**quadaxel**

!!!!!! that was so beautiful im crying aaaaaaaaaa

**flowerboi**

               He crashed in Sochi though. 

**nyankatsuki**

_               @flowerboi  _ literally no one asked u

**nikiforova**

i will always stan victor but even i can see the emotion pouring. his interpretation of vitya’s program is more heartfelt—if victor felt longing, then yuuri felt loss. in this essay, i will  

**sasuke uchiha**

lol isnt he retired?

 

* * *

_ Act IV _

* * *

 

Victor Nikiforov shoots into his life like a blazing star. He is more real than all the posters that Yuuri has collected on his walls, but he is also infinitely more ethereal in the way he  _ glows,  _ elegant even in the way he literally bares himself so openly to Yuuri. 

Bursting his way into the onsen, Yuuri screams,  _ “Victor?!” _

“Yuuri, I’m your new coach!”

 

* * *

 

It’s easier to fake it when’s he’s being  _ physically _ coached. Running up and down the steps of Hasetsu Castle is a matter of stamina; going through the motions of his old routines is a matter of muscle memory. Learning new choreography has never been an issue. Yuuri has been dancing for more than a decade. His leg extensions are easily fixed, and his posture has never been one to be criticized. 

No, that isn’t the problem.

The problem is this:

“Yuuri, I was thinking about starting you off with some soul light exercises. Just standard. I want to see how refined your control is.”

See, Victor has flown halfway across the world and has chosen to give up a season for him. As with several things going on in his life, Yuuri does not know why. But what Yuuri does know is the concept of selfishness (read: guilt). It’s what keeps him up in the evenings, the lack of sleep digging shadows under his eyes; and it’s the lead curling in his stomach whenever Victor does anything so much as smile in his direction. 

He’s smiling right now, but the problem is also this: 

The dinner table freezes. Yuuri’s heart leaps into his throat. 

This is how it ends—just as everything begins, with the world offering Yuuri just a taste of what he so desperately craves before immediately snatching it away. 

Except:

_ "Vicchan," _ Hiroko says firmly, scolding a five-time world champion like she would a five-year old child. Yuuri gazes at his mother in awe. Toshiya nods sagely by her side. And with her semi-broken English, Hiroko continues, “No work on table. Family time only.”

His heart skips a beat.  _ Wait, what? _

_ Family time only?  _ Yuuri watches Mari raises a brow, meeting his stare as she chuckles lowly into what he suspects is beer. He turns to observe Victor’s reaction and takes note of the full blush on the latter’s face, pleased and delighted at his own inclusion in the private group. Though Victor ducks his head down bashfully at the admonishment, Yuuri thinks he can see him mouth the word ‘family’ to himself with an eye-crinkling smile. 

“Ah. Sorry, Hiroko-san,” Victor says sheepishly, and the tension dissipates as he reaches over to steal a piece of chicken from Yuuri’s bowl. Yuuri lets him. 

The world continues to spin for another day. 

 

* * *

 

There is a small reprieve from this sudden rush of things: the early morning jogs, ballet practice, afternoon calisthenics, and the planning of his technicals. Lately, Yuuri hasn’t had much of a break. (For some reason, Victor hasn’t heard the news that most of the world already has—Yuuri’s retirement.) 

But there is a small window in the routine, and it falls in the time between dinner and Victor’s evening soak in the onsen.  

When Yuuri visits Vicchan, Mari is already there; the mild fragrance of incense blankets the room. He moves to kneel beside her, shifting his weight to rest on his calves as he pays his respects. 

“You have to tell him eventually,” Mari says, eyes fixed forward. 

“I know.”

“I won’t offer you my blessing for your training,” Mari adds, even as she brings her palms together to cup warm orange radiance between them. 

Yuuri smiles knowingly but reaches out to close her hands. The move takes neither of them by surprise. The light dissipates. “Blessings only last once, and the light isn’t mine. It’s insincere and impractical.”

Mari hums. “Then tell him.”

“I’m waiting for the right moment.”

“Okay.”

_ I don’t want him to leave, _ Yuuri does not say. 

_ You can ask him to stay,  _ Mari does not say back. 

 

* * *

 

Up until this moment, Yuuri has always held Victor at a distance. At first, it’s because of the idolization (read: in what reality are you really here?), but later, Yuuri realizes that it’s out of fear—that niggling urge to give into self-preservation.  _ Victor can’t decide to dislike him if he doesn’t know him, right? _

“Yuuri.”

And Yuuri blinks, brought back from the turmoil of his thoughts as he recalls Victor’s question. 

Victor stands in front of him, one palm lazily held up as he effortlessly maintains a tiny floating sphere of silver as a makeshift lantern of sorts. Yuuri eyes it wearily and unconsciously rubs at his chest. “No lights, please.”

Immediately, Victor drops his palm. Even in the dark, his expression can be obviously identified as concern. “Yuuri?”

Yuuri shakes his head.  _ Not now.  _

“You want… to sleep,” Yuuri instead repeats haltingly. “Inside my room?”

There’s a moment of reluctance. 

“...Yes!” Victor exclaims, letting the matter go and nodding enthusiastically with a smile that’s far too charming to be completely genuine. 

“To sleep?” Yuuri asks again hesitantly, unsure if the usual connotations of the phrase apply or not. 

“To sleep, yes,” Victor says, trying to seem at ease while standing awkwardly by Yuuri’s doorway. He fails, but Yuuri is hardly one to point it out. He, of all people, is prone to his own bouts of anxiety, after all. For all that the world has forgotten, Victor Nikiforov is still human. 

Human. Blue eyes shadowed just like his and a smile straining on his lips. The tightening grasping of a pillow against a chest and a poodle heeling obediently by his feet. 

Yuuri coughs. “We can… not sleep?”

The strained smile is stretched wider. “Oh?”

And Yuuri’s cheeks redden at the implications of what he has just said. “Ah, no!” he says, shaking his hands wildly, “I meant we can do something else! Talk. We can talk? Do you want to talk, Victor?”

“Oh.” The smile drops, but the way Victor suddenly regards him is different—softer and perhaps a little bit more fond. Then Victor ducks his gaze, and he’s laughing quietly. “Sure. Let’s talk, Yuuri.”

 

* * *

 

It becomes an unspoken agreement. Victor shows up by his door, and Yuuri lets him in. They bunch up on opposing sides of the bed. 

Sometimes, they talk: 

Innocuous conversations on fruit preferences and the differences between winters in St. Petersburg and Hasetsu; the stories behind the scar on Victor’s hip and the bruise on Yuuri’s knee; the trivialities of a day spent watching seagulls on the beach, the white foam frothing by the shore, and the glimmer across the ocean waves. 

The more serious discussions are left hanging until two in the morning (read: there are words you are not ready to hear). So they do not talk about the act of dancing, of arched arms reaching out to the stars, of light feet moving across the waxed wooden floorboards in leaps and bounds. 

Sometimes, they whisper into the night. (Other times, they don’t.) 

 

* * *

 

In the end, the conversation slips out twelve hours before it’s meant to—during their lunch break:   

“Is that it then?” And though Yuuri flinches at the words, he knows Victor doesn’t mean them to sound that way—to sound trivial and inconsequential. Victor says them kindly, in a well-exerted effort to understand. “You lost your light because you mourn your dog?”

Yuuri bites back a sigh. Of course, Victor has noticed. Given that he hasn’t conjured light since Phichit’s blessing, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

“Maybe,” Yuuri admits slowly, tracing invisible patterns on the cold bench seat. “For the most part, I think it was the cause. But...”

“But?”

“My light was always a bit weak.”  _ This is the truth of you.  _ “I suspect that maybe… it was something that was coming for a while now. Maybe Vicchan was the main catalyst for it, but one way or another, it would have probably put itself out somehow.”

He says this resignedly, and it doesn’t feel like coming home, but it feels a little more grounding—to have found a way to make sense of all of this. It isn’t Vicchan’s fault for dying or Mari’s for accidentally letting go of his leash or even  _ his  _ own for leaving; at least, not for that. It’s the truth of him, and had all of this not happened, he would have found his way here anyway. He has no one in the world to blame but himself. 

From his place beside Yuuri, Victor spontaneously decides to move into a more comfortable position, lifting both his knees to sit cross-legged and shifting his weight so that his back rests supported against Yuuri’s side. “You are not weak, Yuuri.” 

Yuuri watches him from the corner of his eye. “I am not who you think I am.”

Victor smiles, leaning back further. “Neither am I.”

 

* * *

 

The clock should be ticking down now. 

Victor knows.

_ (I don’t want you to leave.) _

 

* * *

 

Victor has always been a person inclined to touch. In dance, after all, gestures are key. 

“Steady,” he murmurs as he taps fingers to Yuuri’s calf, supporting the leg as Yuuri stretches his foot into the air. 

or

“Focus!” he teases with a light flick to Yuuri’s side. 

For the most part, the touches are casual, non-lingering (read: he lies; they tingle on his skin). But sometimes, they’re a hand gently pressing on the small of his back and fingers lightly combing through his hair and twice when they’ve accidentally fallen asleep on their nightly conversations, an arm slinging over his waist, soft puffs of air tickling his neck. 

Right now, Victor extends his hand to him while humming the tune of a waltz under his breath, a warm smile worn on his face.

 

* * *

 

_ (I don’t want you to leave.) _

_ (Ask me to stay.) _

 

* * *

_ Act V _

* * *

 

(In the middle of the night:

“I’m retired.”

“I know.”

“...But you’re still here.”

“That I am.”

“...”

“Do you not want me to be?”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

“...”

“...”

“I’m retired.”

“I know.”)

 

* * *

 

When Yuuri shows him the shrine, Victor immediately steps forward and rests on his knees. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Vicchan,” Victor greets warmly; and deeply, he bows his head down to the floor. “Please rest well. I promise to take care of our Yuuri for the both of us now.”

 

* * *

 

The waves crash loudly against the shore. 

Over the din of it, Yuuri confesses, “I left Hasetsu five years ago and never once visited. I told myself that if I  _ leave, _ then I have to make it worth it—worth their sacrifices and maybe mine. I promised to win gold. I told everyone that I was happy.” Slowly, he reaches over to take hold of Victor hands, traces lifelines with trailing fingers. “Five years later, I came back with barely any wins to my name—with guilt for a dog and a soul that I think I’ve forever lost.”

Always, Victor smiles. “My family sent me to St. Petersburg to dance. I haven’t seen them in seven years. We grew apart.”

“You went to St. Petersburg to dance.”

“Yes.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Yes.”

Yuuri raises his brow. “I’m retired.”

Victor hums. His hands move within Yuuri’s, cupping together, and there it is—silverlight, soul light, wishes and dreams that have yet to come true; a blessing. “Yuuri,” Victor says softly (read: like even his very name is loved). “Who do you want me to be to you?” 

Yuuri pauses, considers the question carefully as he looks around him—at the grayness of the sky, the stillness of the sea, and the subtle beauty found in all the dullness of this Japanese backwater town that this man had blindly leapt into. Perhaps there is something about the ordinariness of it and the ordinariness of him.  _ Perhaps,  _ Yuuri thinks,  _ there is something about the ordinariness of you too.  _

His hands are still clasped around Victor’s own, and he brings them to his chest, closing them shut, softly extinguishing the light between them. 

“Be Victor,” Yuuri says, and his voice is tentative, but the force of his smile makes his eyes crinkle; sincerity is laughter in the wind. “That is enough for me.”

 

* * *

 

“My soul was… yellow. Like a faded sort of yellow—”

Victor reaches for Yuuri’s hand, presses his lips to the pulse point of his wrist. Matter-of-factly, he says, “It’s gold,  _ solnyshko.” _

Yuuri grins indulgently. “You’ve never even seen it. Apart from dance videos, I mean. But you can never trust those—”

“I’ve seen it,” Victor interrupts, tilting his head in a manner that is both fond and intent in mischief. 

“Oh. When?”

“You danced with me in the banquet, but I don’t think you remember that,” Victor says musingly. “You don’t even remember that you asked me to be your coach.”

Yuuri blinks. “I asked you to be my coach?”

“Yes. And then you promptly retired.”

“...I was drunk off sixteen flutes of champagne,” Yuuri eventually sighs. “No one tells me anything.”

Victor laughs, bright and loud. “Did you know you glow in your sleep?”

_ “What?” _

 

* * *

 

Recovery goes like this:

_ Focus. Focus. Focus.  _

“Yuuri,” Victor murmurs, laying a tender kiss to the palm of his hand then to his wrist, the inside of his elbow, his shoulder—a path. “Focus, Yuuri.” 

Yuuri laughs, and he looks to Victor, shifting around in his arms, leans up to meet him halfway:

And  _ there _ —it blooms between them, soft and resplendent and free, and settling sweetly into the warmth of his heart.

_ This is the truth of you.  _

(read: it’s love)

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I love all forms of feedback! Feel free to leave me some comments and/or kudos, and chat me up on [my tumblr](http://theaveragepenguin.tumblr.com/)! :D
> 
> If you're interested in looking at more litmag stuff, you can find their tumblr [here](https://yoilitmag.tumblr.com/).


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